President Bush Seeks Broader Wiretapping Authority
 

All's I'll say on this is all them "conspiracy theories" like Alex Jones's website are coming true.
Bye bye land of the free,no freedom there no more......shocking.
http://www.voanews.com/english/2008-01-25-voa47.cfm

Re: President Bush Seeks Broader Wiretapping Authority
 

This could come and bite bush in the ass. Imagine if somone tapped the white house, and it turned out the leader of the free world isnt quite as intelligent as maybe he should be in such a powerfull job.... oh hang on:erm:

Re: President Bush Seeks Broader Wiretapping Authority
 

Does this mean the have paid their phone bills now?

Re: President Bush Seeks Broader Wiretapping Authority
 

The background to this is that in the 60s there was a lot of illegal wiretapping going on under the carpet, mainly the Hoover FBI v anyone they didn't like politically, like Martin Luther King. Nixon was naturally a big fan, being paranoid and corrupt. Naturally when this got exposed there was a bit of a scandal, so they passed an Act in the late 1970s called FISA which allowed wiretapping under judicial supervision.

For Bush and co., judicial supervision is an unnecessary control on supreme executive power, so they ignored it and went back to the old ways, learned in the Nixon White House so many of them grew up in. When this illegal activity inevitably leaked out they tried to grant retrospective immunity to the telecoms companies who colluded and it all got messy. What's obvious is that the current administration would dearly like to tap the phone of anyone, anytime without anyone knowing or any external supervision, under the handy all-encompassing 'anti-terror' excuse. This isn't quite the freedom-loving America they're sworn to defend, is it?

Re: President Bush Seeks Broader Wiretapping Authority
 

i hope whatever it is bites real hard/;)

---------- Post added at 11:52 ---------- Previous post was at 11:50 ----------

well said bb.:tu:

Re: President Bush Seeks Broader Wiretapping Authority
 

LOL, surely there is not anyone around now who still believes they can communicate via a public network and it not be monitored ?

Anoniminity and privacy over public networks is nothing but a falacy, a figment of someones imagination just as your permitted to believe you live in a free society.

Re: President Bush Seeks Broader Wiretapping Authority
 

Work out the total number of emails, phone calls, forum posts and IMs being created every second - best anyone could probably do would be checking for certain words, and even then the backlog of stuff to be checked would just keep growing.

Most surveillance stuff like this is usually targetted, and then filtered for key words (imho).

btw, if we don't live in a (relatively) free society, how come you could post that statement?

Re: President Bush Seeks Broader Wiretapping Authority
 

True, but the point is that without oversight there's nothing to stop monitoring of democratic political opponents, pressure groups and other legal activities, since there's no one to say 'hey'. That's the reason for having judicially-overseen wiretapping.

Re: President Bush Seeks Broader Wiretapping Authority
 

Totally agree - I was just point out the (im)practicalities of blanket surveillance.